Episode 42, Part 2: Doug Tips the Scales

Doug is on vacation, and for a week he's been staying at Grandma Funnie's house. Unlike Grandma Opal who would encourage Doug to explore and have fun, Grandma Funnie has done nothing but baby Doug the entire week.

He's been sitting around eating junk food all day. She calls him from the kitchen to ask if he's finished with his cake. He crams a piece down his throat and tells her that he has one more slice. Ignoring that, she enters the room with two ice cream sundaes.

She couldn't remember if he liked chocolate fudge or butterscotch on ice cream so she brought both. Apparently it is more trouble to ask someone a question than it is to make two ice cream sundaes.

Phil, Theda and Judy are waiting for Doug at the bus stop. They're so excited to see him. Well...Theda is. Phil and Judy don't say a thing before Doug steps off the bus. Theda says, "Douglas! You're here," in a way that is pretty convincing. Phil follows that by saying "you're home" while trying to fake some excitement, but it sounds more like it's just a statement of fact. Judy says, "you're huge."

So yeah, Doug put on a bit of weight at Grandma Funnie's. She just kept feeding him and renting videos for him. What does she do when she doesn't have a visiting relative to fatten up? Also, what happened to Doug's grandfather? I'm guessing Grandpa Funnie had a heart attack at age 34.

Looking in the mirror, Doug agrees with Judy, especially after the button on his pants pops off and shoots around the room. He determines, "I can't let anyone see me like this," right before he has a fantasy.

The fantasy begins with a bunch of people eating peacefully at the Honker Burger. Everyone is startled by a loud stomping and they flee with their food before Doug gets there.

He went from a little overweight to morbidly obese and tall. Someone should tell Doug that gaining a ton of weight won't make you taller.

After the fantasy, the doorbell rings. Doug hides behind some curtains and tells Porkchop not to open the door, but he does anyway. Damn dog. At the door, Skeeter is just excited to see his best friend. He compliments Doug's dress, aka the curtains. Skeeter's just not that bright, or not that good at conveying sarcasm. Doug runs and hides behind a chair. Skeeter tells him to calm down and asks why he's so jittery. Doug says he thought he looked a little different. Skeeter replies, "No, you look just the same...only fat." Without further comment on the fat, Skeeter pulls out Doug's invitation to Beebe's pool party next week.

It's going to be one hell of a party, if the picture is any indication. I don't know who the girl with the beach ball is, but the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Bert from Sesame Street are going to be there. Doug has another fantasy, because he is of course still worried about his weight problem.

Why can't he have one sort of normal fantasy about what people might say? Just a fantasy where he takes his shirt off and Roger pokes his fat belly and asks if he's pregnant while everyone laughs at the stupid joke. It's not enough that he simply be embarrassed in his fantasies. He has to embarrass himself and totally ruin the pool party, pissing off everyone. And he has to be impossibly huge to do it. He can't even have an eating disorder the right way.

At dinner, Doug has requested only one beet. He's on a diet. Phil warns Doug not to go overboard with his diet, and suggests calisthenics. Theda suggests jogging. Judy suggests fasting. She says it's good for the body and soul. He's already down to one beet for dinner. Suggesting a week long fast at this point is encouraging anorexia. Good job, Judy. Luckily Doug ignores this bit of advice, and gets angry at Judy's second choice of fat camp. Theda tells her to be helpful, so Judy invites him up to her room after dinner to show him what to do.

Basically, she just gets him to meditate, sort of, and makes him think thin. She has him hopping around the room, "wafting in the air" as if he were a feather. At the end, she says, "there. I bet you feel thinner already." He agrees and wafts out of the room. In front of the mirror, he notices that he is not actually thinner and gets upset. Judy says that the point of her bullshit was to feel better about being fat. Doug determines that he's going to have to think thin a lot to get through the next couple of days. He repeats the mantra "I'm a twig. I'm string. I'm a feather."

At school, Doug is repeating the mantra while Ms. Wingo teaches about skin and fat.

She's talking about animals having fat to keep them warm in the winter when Patti asks about the summer. What do those animals do in the summer? Ms. Wingo says, "why don't we ask someone who knows a lot about blubber? What do you think, fatty?" Oh yeah, this is a dream. Doug is dreaming about school on his vacation. So much anxiety.

The next day, Doug starts working with Body Shaped by Ronald. It's Ronald Weisenheimer's home workout tape. Doug is having trouble keeping up.

There's a brilliant section of the video called pogorobics, and it's just using a pogo stick. Arnold keeps yelling to jump higher and Doug eventually hits his head on the ceiling. Impressive really, for such a fatty. After pogorobics, the tape ends and tells Doug he has to buy tape #2 to continue. Doug goes to the Weisenheimer store to buy the second tape, where he runs into Connie and Larry.

They tell him to wear vertical stripes and dark colors to hide it. Doug says, "what? My fat?" They say they aren't fat. Connie is big boned. Larry is stout. Doug is husky. Doug buys tape 2.

There's a montage of Doug working out to the tape, eating beets and weighing himself. It's all the usual stuff, except for my new favorite workout. Watermelon juggling.

Doug is really strong.

While jogging, Doug runs into Skeeter as he's coming out of a donut shop. Skeeter is eating cream-filled bear claws whole. He says he is way too skinny for a pool party. What is going on in this town?

At home, Doug finishes tape 2. The next morning he weighs himself. He's back to normal and gets very excited until he looks in the mirror and thinks he still looks fat. Phil and Theda tell him to get ready for the party but he says he's not going. They protest, pointing out he's been looking forward to it and he lost all the weight, but he just points out his gut. Phil reiterates his point about not going overboard with the diet.

Judy tells him he's always had that little tummy. They make him get ready and drive him over to Beebe's.

In the car, he thinks up several excuses for why he can't get in the pool. He doesn't want to get sunburned. He just ate. He forgot his swim suit.

But then he gets to the party and no one is swimming. Skeeter says everyone forgot their swim suits, which is the shittiest excuse ever. Beebe should not be friends with these people. They also recite Doug's other shitty excuses, and make up some of their own. Apparently it's also too hot to swim, and it's just nice to look at the water. Bad timing for a pool party, Beebe. All these kids are just uncomfortable with their bodies right now, what with the changes they're going through.

Beebe confronts Doug and angrily accuses him of forgetting his swim suit too. But he's Doug, and he's not going to have any of that bullshit.

Skeeter follows him first. Then Patti. Then everyone else.

Yay, Doug. Way to do what Beebe should've done 10 minutes ago. Also, everyone knows how to swim now, and no one needs to be saved by Hamburger Boy.

In the end, I can only hope this is the only time Doug flirts with eating disorders. It was good that he ignored Judy's fasting suggestion, and that he finally got to the point of not giving a shit, but he could easily slip into a routine with this. Even Phil recognized the potential danger facing Doug, and for a department store photographer to notice anything at all, that's saying something.